Top Downloads (Recent Episodes)
| Ranking | (last week) | TV-show | |
|---|---|---|---|
| torrentfreak.com | |||
| 1 | (…) | Desperate Housewives | |
| 2 | (…) | Gossip Girl | |
| 3 | (…) | Scrubs | |
| 4 | (…) | One Tree Hill | |
| 5 | (…) | Grey’s Anatomy | |
| 6 | (2) | Stargate Atlantis | |
| 7 | (6) | Knight Rider | |
| 8 | (3) | Star Wars: The Clone Wars | |
| 9 | (…) | 90210 | |
| 10 | (…) | The Mentalist | |
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Top Downloads (All Episodes)
| Ranking | (last week) | TV-show | |
|---|---|---|---|
| showinsider.com | |||
| 1 | (1) | Heroes | |
| 2 | (2) | Prison Break | |
| 3 | (4) | Dexter | |
| 4 | (6) | Californication | |
| 5 | (9) | Gossip Girl | |
| 6 | (3) | House M.D. | |
| 7 | (7) | Stargate Atlantis | |
| 8 | (5) | Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles | |
| 9 | (11) | Grey’s Anatomy | |
| 10 | (10) | Desperate Housewives | |

I didn’t even know there was even such a category. That’s pretty cool.
Do you have any older data of this?
You should have seen the torrent numbers for “Hardcastle & McCormick” back in the day. That’s when it took three weeks to download a single episode!
Rachel here is a link to their archive
http://torrentfreak.com/tag/tv-torrents/
hope that helps
The term ‘pirated’ sounds such a bad word – how about ’shared’?
Ah, thanks Kate!
Starting next week Lost will most likely be at first place for the rest of the season.
I know.. Lost is HUGE in Spain, I think is the #1 show there.
#1 american show.. because they have soap operas on primetime.
Here are the numbers for 2008. The first number represents downloads the second represents US TV viewers.
Most downloaded TV-shows on BitTorrent, 2008 rank show downloads est. US TV viewers
torrentfreak.com
1 Lost 5,730,000 13,400,000
2 Heroes 4,400,000 8,200,000
3 Prison Break 3,840,000 6,100,000
4 Terminator The Sarah Connor Chronicles 2,240,000 5,500,000
5 Desperate Housewives 1,990,000 16,200,000
6 Stargate Atlantis 1,810,000 1,700,000
7 Dexter 1,660,000 7,200,000
8 House 1,520,000 15,700,000
9 Grey’s Anatomy 1,380,000 16,000,000
10 Smallville 1,150,000 4,100,000
I see the reworded copyright message ABC uses at the end of Desperate Housewives (”Warning! This is copyrighted material!”) is working out real well for them.
Ben, let’s use a better word than “shared” or “pirated” – STOLEN. Because that’s what the shows are.
If all shows were STOLEN as heavily as these, they’d never be made as advertisers wouldn’t pay for the airtime and as a result networks wouldn’t produce them.
There are some in the industry that say that’s one factor that killed “Jericho” – the show’s rabid fan base mostly watched it online resulting in pitiful Nielsen ratings, despite pleas from the show’s cast to watch it when it viewed or to at least DVR it rather than STEAL it.
There are some in the industry that say that’s one factor that killed “Jericho”
No, that’s what that rabid fanbase says. Download penetration is not nearly enough to make a dent in ratings if a show actually has potential to survive. The majority of these downloads are foreigners anyway, who would never be able to count in the US ratings no matter what.
Can i just say that i have no influence in Neilson ratings, because i don’t even live in the US. Of course i support the American Industry, we actually like US shows and want them to succeed. I just don’t support the TV networks in Australia. It is a shame that ‘pirating’ shows is one of the only ways to watch our shows here without being screwed over. We don’t have access to hulu, abc.com etc. This is one of our few options.
I don’t have a Neilson box, so what I watch isn’t counted regardless. I like Hulu because of the more reasonable short commercials. If what I want to watch isn’t on Hulu, do the torrents I go. Give me an option without half the show being commercials like Hulu and I will gladly participate. Until then, what or how I watch my shows doesn’t matter because I’m not counted.